Leave for Ireland - May 20, 2009

Phil and I woke up at the break of dawn, or 6:45am in order to eat breakfast and finish last minute packing, unplugging, and saying goodbye to our apartment.  I was not totally stressed out, I am always just a little bit worried that I have forgotten something vitally important that I will not be able to replace on the trip.  At about 7:30am Andrew, his wife Kelsey, and their baby Ella came to pick us up and we all crammed into their car to make the drive to the airport.  Our first flight from XNA to Atlanta went well and we met up with Kyle who was in our group, during our layover in Atlanta we ate Chick-fil-a for lunch.  Everything was on-time from Atlanta to JFK and then we had like 30 minutes until we boarded our flight to Dublin.  The flight to Dublin was cool, we each had our own mini tv screen and there were like 9 movies to choose from as well as shows and games, etc.  Phil and I watched "Marley and Me," it was really "okay".  We were served dinner of pasta, bread, cheese, roll, and a double chocolate brownie.  We tried to sleep, that didn't really happen.  With two hours left on the plane we were served a warm bagel with cream cheese and a banana.  Overall, it was a good fight.  Our whole team, minus Heather, the girl who forgot to check her passport until 2 days before we were to leave and found out that it expired the day we left, were on the flight from JFK to Dublin.  In Dublin after going through customs etc, we waited to be picked up.  None of us really knew if anyone was going to be there when we got off the plane, but Billy and Mindi were there.  We loaded the buses with luggage and people and then drove to Belfast.  We ate sandwiches for lunch and then all went to bed.  We were awoken an hour and a half before we thought dinner was going to be to be taken out to a nice restaurant by some guy who I am not entirely sure who he is.  I got some kind of seafood dish with shrimp, crab, and garlic cream sauce, as well as curly fries (which were called something different of course).  When we were back from dinner we slept some more.